How the ladder works

When you beat a player, if they're ahead of you, you move up halfway to them. So if you're rank 99 and you beat rank 1, you move up to 50.

If you lose a game, there's no penalty.

Any bnet map counts toward the ladder although it's obviously true that GOW is the most popular map. If you can convince anyone above you to 1s on another BNE then that works fine too for climbing the ladder.